Balance of Risks - Photography and Society

Accident Scene on Alaskan Way Viaduct, Seattle

With added focus on security, photographers may come under increased scrutiny when photographing in public. In the United Kingdom., increased restrictions have led to photographers meeting to protest the strictness of the new rules and their implementation as discussed in a Guardian.co.uk article . Understanding the processes that each side brings to an encounter can help defuse a situation.

Photographers understand that the law gives them the right to photograph in public places. Their focus is the image, the story, and their rights to photograph. They may view attempts to prevent them from photographing in public as infringing on their rights in a free society. Freedom of expression helps to maintain a free nation and curtailment of these rights endangers that same free expression.

The police are men and women who put their lives on the line to protect us. The speeding driver they stop may have an outstanding warrant and a gun. The man photographing a structure or facility may be abetting an act of terrorism . The police are trained to be vigilant because in doing so they protect both the public and themselves from danger. These adverse risks may be those at the long end of the bell curve -- statistically the chance the photographer is a terrorist is very small. However the police officer must always consider the risks at the end of the bell curve because of the considerable consequence of ignoring a real problem.

This leads to the topic of Type I and Type II error. Consider if the null-hypothesis is that "the photographer is a terrorist". A Type I error would be to reject the null-hypothesis ("the photographer is a terrorist") when it is actually true. A Type II error would be to accept the null-hypothesis ("the photographer is a terrorist") when it is actually false and should have been rejected. A low Type I error rate would have a high specificity. Rejecting the null-hypothesis when the null-hypothesis is true could happen, for example, when a police officer questions a photographer who is photographing a public structure, releases him, and he turns out to be a terrorist. A low Type II error rate would have a high sensitivity. An example of Type II error would be if the policeman treats the photographer as a terrorist and he turns out to be just a photographer.

Ultimately, setting appropriate Type I and Type II error standards is the job of the governments, and thus the people whom they represent. How many rights do you want to tread upon in exchange for "perfect" protection from risk? What degree of risk of personal property loss and loss of lives are you willing to accept in exchange for "perfect" freedom of expression? Laws must reflect these conscious decisions about how civil society should be governed.

While we need to be concerned about being protected from terrorism, we also need to make sure our rights aren't whittled away in the process, thus undercutting the very foundation of our freedoms. This risk of losing our rights is a byproduct of decreasing the Type I error rate while allowing the Type II error rate to rise. This can be restated as interrogating more photographers in order to cut the risk of a terrorist photographing a target building. It's in the best interest of society to have all the relevant variables well defined and set forth in the law and procedures and to maintain a healthy balance of risk.

This is a process that should involve police and photographers as well as lawmakers and other public officials as they seek to understand the challenges that each party faces, and seek to cooperate in solving the underlying problems. This is a discussion that involves many viewpoints, including this blog entry regarding an interaction with a security guard.